fair enough...no worries...just making a general note because, when everyone has to just get that one thing out there, it can tend to lead to 3 pages of inflammatory tone...which, as I am sure you are aware, is not what we are about...that being said, I have always admired your writing skills

Some of the guys posting responses act like women are waging war against you by trying to passive-aggressively punish the follower for declining them by "Well, I just won't smile at her as much" or "I'll not ask her again"- chances are, the only person feeling the burn is yourself- she's oblivious to whatever embargo you've imposed upon her, because she has other concerns, and to assume you're one of them is quite self-flattering.

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I think the smiling thing is a bit silly, but why should the man feel obligated to ask again after being turned down? Isn't it just as reasonable for the man not to ask again as it is for the woman to turn him down in the first place?

I think the smiling thing is a bit silly, but why should the man feel obligated to ask again after being turned down? Isn't it just as reasonable for the man not to ask again as it is for the woman to turn him down in the first place?

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It's not that they're obligated to ask again; it's that there are (apparently) guys who spend way too much time waging a little cold war in their minds over the fact that they're deliberately not asking again.

IMO a reasonable response (for either the asker or askee) is to simply shrug this stuff off and move on to something more positive, unless it becomes a very obvious pattern that points to an actual issue/problem.

I'm thinking of starting a "Note to self" thread of things we need to tell ourselves before we speak, accept offers, walk out of the house, open our eyes, etc. because I have a lot of them I'm working on. I tend to opine overmuch on things that hit close to home, and need to avoid that.

new threads are always welcome...opining is as well....there is just occasionally a need to realize that, because this is not a personal journal, the way in which one chooses to opine can bring with it, unintended consequences...and the way in which each of us may opine in private (myself included, in a big way)cannot neccessarily be exactly the way we can opine here...and now, back onto this topic

This thread reminds me of when my son was very young and he would call someone to play. Sometimes the response was "I don't feel like playing with you today". No explanation, no hard feelings, and the kids would get together another day. Out of the mouths of babes. Mind you this was the boys' response, not the girls'.

At our practice parties/socials the songs are usually pretty short so as to squeeze more dances in per party as well as get dancers used to competition times. The dances are announced at the start of the music so it takes a little bit for the dance to sink in, a little bit more to survey the room for a potential partner, even more time to make your way to said potential partner, lead that partner to a good spot on the floor - by this point we are well into the song and to get some good moves in you have to get with it! So going through these steps to arrive at a refusal .... well now the song has gone on for some time and to now seek out a new partner, make your way to them, and ask, there just isn't enough music left to make it worth it.
So I am there to dance. If I get a refusal (depending on the type and how it is delivered) it tells me she is NOT there to dance. I am not gong to waste another good song persuing someone who is not there to dance. It is not to be mean or punitive; it is to insure I get in some quality dance time. Now if she comes to me to ask for a dance then sure, let's go for it, that's why we are there!

I can think of only one time. It was when I asked this lady to dance and she said "The music hasn't even started playing yet!" While I understand this reasoning, usually at these social dance events, people ask their partner to dance before the music plays. This alone wouldn't have bothered me, but then when the music started playing she walked away and went to dance with someone else....

O...K...

Don't know what that was all about. I would have rather she simply told me no. haha

That's happened before. No music, "Wanna dance?/Sure" it's something neither of us like. "Aw, well, maybe next time, then?" and of course, if they have an "our song" with someone, and someone asks them, it's generally understood "Oh- no, never mind, I'll get you next time, go do your thing." Sambas are like that at our studio. Two women have implied "spotlight dances" every Friday, and it's kind of an unspoken "get off the floor" kind of thing, but newbs are forgiven. On the surface, it sounds crappy, but it's not usually.

I'm finding this all very interesting. I realize that the thread is directed at men asking women, but I can't help myself from flipping it around. I'm a very infrequent social dancer, and when I do attend a social dance I find that I need to do a lot of the asking. Men who know me usually (but not always) will accept. Of men who don't know me, I find that probably 75% of them will say no, if I ask them to dance. Of those who refuse, whether they know me or not, half will give a "reason" and half won't. I don't really care whether they have a reason. My typical response to a refusal is just to smile and say OK, and to tell them my name, ask their name, and then mention that if he wants to dance a waltz or rumba or whatever with me later, to feel free to track me down. Very, very occasionally one of them will do that. If I attend another social dance after that, it's probably been such a long interval that I wouldn't remember if I was asking someone who'd turned me down before, so it wouldn't necessarily keep me from asking - although odds would be that there had been a prior refusal and that I'd get a repeat refusal. I'm OK with that - I can live with focusing on the social rather than the dance part of the event.

If you take the statistics I cited and multiply them by 557.388, you come up with a sample representing the 37,345 DF members, the percentages being the same. Add a little faith in DF being a perfect representation of everything, then you have conclusive proof that people still need to get over themselves.

I would also conjecture that the average df member is more invested in dance than the population as a whole, and probably an over representation of the more advanced segment that probably dances more than average. That means this statistic is probably over estimating the number of dances people do, strengthening the hypothesis that most people don't dance all of the dances at a social

sociology BA here...MA after that...lots of work in stats and controlling for social factors...and I am not convinced that there are that many intervening factors that one would really have to control for in the DF sample...as I am also not convinced that advanced students dance more than intermediate students at socials absent a partner...certainly runs counter to what LG and I have experienced...and while DF may have many advanced students, it could be argued that folks who are very active online may be less social (lol, or more)...it may all even out in the wash.... the basic point remains that most folks are not dancing every dance....many are not dancing much of the dances....so one needs to be okay with that

Something tells me there are a lot more than 67 people here... nor is DF a perfect representation of the population of every social dance.

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I suspect 67 people is enough to be a reasonable representation of Dance Forums as a whole.

However, the population on Dance Forums is skewed towards competitors, particularly pro-am competitors. I strongly suspect that competitors, and particularly pro-am competitors, dance fewer dances socially than the average dancer in the overall ballroom population.